Current State of Affairs

So, I finally got around to taking pictures today. Basically, the shop is kind of a mess. We're in an in-between stage. We've gotten a lot done, and the shop is almost there. We still have a list of things to get done, but the big things that will provide functionality are almost finished.

Tonight, Don and I broke down a stack of plywood and 2x4s that was sitting across sawhorses, and had become sort of a workstation on its own. Originally, it was a pile of materials to work from, but it just sort of settled in for a while while we were working on benches and work surfaces to be used around the shop. So, it's been there for a few weeks. Don and I had gotten the frame close to wrapped up for a large outfeed surface for our table saws, and realized that the pile on the sawhorses had diminished enough that we could dispense with the whole thing entirely. And like that, 32 more square feet of workspace cleared up, and the shop opened up a little more.

But even though things are coming so close to being workable, it's still largely a contingency-based arrangement. For instance, the current chop saw station is actually arranged on top of my table saw. A saw used as a space to use a saw... the irony of it. A couple of scraps are nailed together to provide support for long pieces hanging off of the chop saw, and a couple more scraps are nailed together, and they get strap-clamped to the extension table to allow accurate repetitive cuts. All of this cobbled together improvised work is happening on top of a Saw Stop table saw, which is a great and accurate piece of equipment in its own right.

My space in the bench room is a mess. I have a small bench out to work on, the desk I'm using for general organization and officey type stuff is on the floor, and there's an auxiliary bench set up to hold various things as work is being done. And I have wall shelves mounted, and some other things in place. But there's still some tweaking to be done, and I think some of the big things will get rearranged a little bit.

Ductwork is almost complete in the machine room, which is good. We're hoping the dust collectors we have are strong enough to do what they need to do, because otherwise we'll need to get something bigger to service the whole shop. This is a hard thing to contemplate, since we already have to lay out for plumbing to be done in the finishing room, because of the loft.



This is the loft. This is the reason we need a plumber. Before, we just had the office, and it had a drop ceiling. The ceiling tiles were made of a material that would dissolve if it got wet, which means the general sprinkler system would dissolve the tiles, and put out any fires that were in the office. But now that we have the loft in place, the plywood that's there will get in the way of any water coming down, so we need sprinklers inside the room. It'll be a great storage space up top, but we hadn't really considered the sprinkler thing before, so that's going to cost us a goodly chunk of change.

Bit by bit though, it's all coming together.